Full steam ahead

Welcome to the world of steam - clean, tidy and almost silent

- Sam Llewellyn

The tomatoes were waltzing up their bamboos by the wheelhouse windows. Beyond them was a vista of steep shores, to port the mountains of Jura, to starboard the hills of Scarba. Between them a broad black stretch of water was wringing its hands. ‘Sea eagle’s nest,’ said Nick Walker, the skipper, pointing to a clutter of rubbish halfway up a tree on the Jura shore. I felt the wheel kick as the ebb caught the puffer’s nose and tried to spin it into a miniature whirlpool – a speciality of the Corryvreckan, one of Britain’s more significant tidal gates. I thought, here we are in a 160-ton ship, growing tomatoes in the wheelhouse and you can’t hear the engine.

From outside, the steam world looks like a collection of fanatics with leather hats and filthy hi-vis jackets. From inside, it looks much more elegant. The steamship I was steering was Vic32, one of the Clyde puffers that shifted cargoes along the west coast of Scotland, rescued by Nick and a bunch of enthusiasts in the 1970s.